• Pontes settles the cash leg of wholesale tokenised-asset trades directly in central bank money, live since September 21, 2026, per the ECB.
• Thirteen named market participants onboarded ahead of launch: ABANCA, BayernLB, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, Cecabank, Deka Bank, Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank, European Investment Bank, KfW, Memo Bank, NRW.BANK, Santander and Société Générale.
• Deutsche Bundesbank onboarded separately, beyond those 13 — the ECB says it 'has also onboarded in a market participant capacity.'
• Four DLT operators — Axiology, Cashlink, Clearstream and SWIAT — connect trading platforms to the new settlement rail.
• Core services are live now; expanded operating hours and features roll out gradually, with full implementation targeted for 2028.

The European Central Bank went live on September 21, 2026 with Pontes, a solution that settles the cash leg of wholesale tokenised-asset trades in central bank money rather than a private-issuer claim, according to the ECB's own press release. Thirteen named market participants and four DLT operators completed onboarding ahead of launch, and the Deutsche Bundesbank separately onboarded in a market-participant capacity. Full implementation is targeted for 2028.

How the settlement layer works

Pontes does not replace trading venues or custodians; it bundles the steps around a tokenised-asset trade — issuance, trading, settlement, custody and servicing — into one rail, and supports smart-contract automation, per the ECB's release. The distinguishing feature is where the cash leg settles: central bank money, which carries no issuer credit risk, rather than a commercial intermediary's balance sheet. The release does not specify which existing Eurosystem payment platform Pontes connects to.

The onboarding roster

Thirteen market participants completed onboarding before launch: ABANCA, BayernLB, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, Cecabank, Deka Bank, Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank, the European Investment Bank, KfW, Memo Bank, NRW.BANK, Santander and Société Générale, per the ECB. Four DLT operators — Axiology, Cashlink, Clearstream and SWIAT — also onboarded. The Deutsche Bundesbank is listed separately from the 13, the ECB saying it 'has also onboarded in a market participant capacity.'

What's live now, what's ahead

Core services are available as of the September 21 launch; the ECB says enhanced features and longer operating hours will be introduced gradually, with full implementation expected by 2028, per its release. That leaves roughly two years in which the participant list, feature set and operating hours can all still change — a compliance or treasury team weighing when to route trades through Pontes is planning against a system still being built out, not a finished one.

What the roster signals

The 13 named participants skew toward German and Iberian institutions with development-bank ties — KfW, NRW.BANK, Deka Bank, DZ Bank, BayernLB, ABANCA, Cecabank — alongside Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale, Caisse des Dépôts, Memo Bank and the European Investment Bank. That composition reads as an initial cohort already active in DLT settlement pilots rather than a broad euro-area draw; institutions outside that list have not yet been shown a path to onboarding.

In the officials' words

ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said Pontes 'brings the stability and trust of central bank money to the European tokenised finance ecosystem,' while ECB President Christine Lagarde said the Eurosystem 'is working to enable a more integrated, innovative and resilient European financial market in the digital age,' per the September 21 release. Neither statement specifies what happens to institutions that keep settling tokenised trades outside Pontes.